For six years the Democrats have
been bent on committing political suicide. Or so it seems. President Barack
Obama has been the point man for this bizarre self-immolation. That period
represents the culmination of a long 30 year exercise in political obtuseness
that has seen a steady estrangement from the party's roots and a fatal
mimicking of their Republican rivals. 2010 saw the first fruits of the project.
Despite every plank in the traditional GOP program being exposed as rotten and
the cause of national disasters at home and abroad, the Democrats under White
House leadership contrived to allow the opposition to paint them as the
problem. What should have been 1934 became 1994. Now the party has had both
wrists slashed as it awaits morosely and impotently for the coup de grace in
2016.

Yet, party leaders react with
surprise. They beat their breasts and gnash their teeth -- how on earth could
this have happened? Who could have predicted this debacle?

This bizarre tale knows no
precedent in American political history. The explanation, though, is readily
apparent for those willing to look at the record. The formula did not require
anything as exotic as hemlock; rather the more prosaic ingredients were imbibed
gradually. The most toxic have been these.

One, alienate your core
constituencies. That includes reneging on a pledge to help the trade unions;
launch a campaign of vilification against school teachers -- from kindergarten
through college; attack civil liberties protections; commit to reductions in
Social Security and Medicare; stiff the environmentalists. In short, do to them
in a calculated way what a Republican president would do instinctively.

Two, curry favor with your party's
traditional enemies: Wall Street, Big Pharma, the Christian Right, the energy
and industrial agriculture trusts. That has the dual effect of blunting your
message and blurring your image while emboldening the objects of your favors to
demand even more.

Three, permit the Republicans in
Congress to exploit to the fullest their irresponsible tactics by never
denouncing them for what they are or moving to challenge them on their own
electoral turf. As a corollary, go along with the coy designation of the Tea
Party controlled radical reactionary Republican Party as self-styled
"conservatives."

Four, enable the Republicans to
shape public discourse by monopolizing the airways and media. Democratic
silence, timidity, defensiveness and evasion have given the Republicans the
free run of the playing field. On this score, the party's leadership has been
abject -- the president above all. Endless visits to daytime TV shows to
schmooze about nothing in particular undercut respect for the presidency,
neutralize the advantage of the incumbency and motivate the public to tune out
or denigrate important messages. Mr. Obama seems oblivious to the obvious truth
that most of the country stopped paying attention to what he says years ago.

At a time when Americans feel more
discontent and view their prospects more darkly than on any occasion since the
depths of the Great Depression, the Democrats have defaulted. They offer no interpretation
that conforms to their bedrock principles; they offer no narrative that fits
the pieces into a comprehensible whole; they offer no vision for the future.
Instead, they have adapted themselves to the Republican narrative and
Republican motifs. They present no robust defense of government as the people's
instrument for meeting communal needs and wants. Rather, they incline toward
the assumption that government and public programs should be viewed
skeptically.

Privatization has been taken aboard
without critical scrutiny; the White House-proposed sequester has resulted in a
sharp reduction of all government services, personnel and budgets. That effect
has been compounded by the failure to provide assistance to state and municipal
governments in 2009 that could have prevented mass layoffs and cutbacks. The
president's buying into the "austerity" snake oil went so far as
broadcasting the Republican propaganda that presents the federal budget as
being no different from a family budget. Above all, he went out of his way to
buffer the financial barons from condemnation and accountability.

The near total neglect of the
Detroit crisis pulls into focus these multiple flaws and faulty judgments. A
great American city is allowed to founder at the very moment that the federal
government is spending hundreds of billions to salvage predatory financial
interests. Not only is this tragedy allowed to occur without assistance from
Washington, it is studiously ignored. The critical financial aid is wrung out
of foundations -- the ultimate confirmation that public responsibilities have
been shed and replaced with pleadings before the "private sector."
The earned pensions of hundreds of thousands are saved only by their
generosity, not by a Democratic administration. The Detroit Museum of Arts,
too, gains a reprieve from having its world class collection scattered to the
four winds like the ashes from a city sacked by barbarians.

The overwhelming majority of those
abandoned by their government are Democrats. Consequently, the populist
passions that have raged since 2008 have been diverted from Wall Street to
Washington. Almost all American politics is a contest for populist imagery. It
provides the only vocabulary for political discourse. Democrats, for more than
a century, identified and encouraged that current of populist thinking that
found its target in the established power of big business and banking.
Republicans have tried strenuously to counteract that tendency by playing on
skepticism of government -- especially the federal government. That great
battle produced the historic victory of the Democratic conception as embodied
in the New Deal. It now is in the process of being reversed.

That is the outcome of a long-term
strategy that gained momentum in the Reagan years. Its successes have gone far
beyond anything that could reasonably be imagined at the time. The Great
Financial Collapse promised to stop the movement in its tracks -- to regain
lost ground and to consolidate what had been won. That the diametric opposite
has occurred represents the ultimate failure of Democrats and their allies.
There is much blame to go around; surely, though, the largest share goes to Mr.
Obama. In this sense, his presidency indeed has been one of the most
consequential in our history. To call it a success, though, is to embrace the
thinking of the radical reactionaries who are celebrating their triumph. Have
years of appeasement -- intellectual and political -- led to a silent
conversion?

What next? The first signs are
discouraging. The noises coming out of the punditocracy, think tanks, media and
the Clinton entourage suggest that the same blinkered views that have brought
the Democratic Party low are being reinforced. Some of this phenomenon can be
understood as sheer intellectual laziness among the inbred Washington elites.
Some expresses the self-interest of those who long have reconciled themselves
to a status quo that has placed them among the country's privileged and keeps
threats to their sinecures at a distance. This is not the age of conviction or
empathy. The psychology of cognitive dissonance reinforces these dispositions.

Adversity is rarely the mother of
invention, as the old adage has it. Experience and history tell us otherwise,
as do behavioral experiments. The psychology of perceived necessity is complex.
Adversity or threat in and of itself does not trigger improvisation or
adjustment. Even the survival instinct does not always spark innovation.
Denial, or avoidance, is normally the first reaction when facing adversity in
trying to reach an objective or to satisfy an interest. Reiteration of the
standard repertoire of responses follows. Hence, we already are seeing a spate
of commentaries to the effect that the big test is 2016; that what happens then
will determine future control of the Senate; that what really counts are the
social issues -- abortion, same sex marriage, immigration -- where legislation
is less important than executive action and the Supreme Court. Hence, we see
Democrats grasping at the straw represented by the weak field of prospective
Republican candidates, most with extreme views far out of line with the locus
of public opinion.

True innovation tends to occur only
in extremis; indulgent complacency is built on the premise that the party is
not in extremis. So they rest content with making tactical adjustments at the
margins rather than alteration of core premises and patterns of action.

There are few signs that any
significant slice of Democratic Party elites have the motivation, conviction
and intestinal fortitude to break out of their self-induced coma. The harsh
truth is that the gumption to take on the arduous task of creating a new
political frame of reference in the country is in short supply. It is far
easier to think in terms of personal career, to concentrate on the political
maneuvers that might keep you in office or get you into a higher office. That
clearly is the outlook of Hillary Clinton.

Last Thursday, her camp heralded
the connection being made with the famed Austin public relations wizard who
produced the slogan "Don't Mess With Texas."

It is this kind of puerile attitude
that has the Democratic Party sinking beneath the waves -- dragging with it the
decent country that the party did so much to create.

We are witnessing a great contest
that will determine the American destiny for generations to come. One side is
mobilized for total war. The other isn't even sure that the battle is engaged.
The latter's supposed champion expends his energy in the neutral no-man's land
searching blindly for common ground. He positions himself thus because he is a
pacifist at heart -- and because he sees some virtue to parts of the opponent's
creed.

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